Changes are
common in this “modern time”. From X-gen to Y-Gen, Millennials to Generation Z,
isolated business to big economics blocks, changes are everywhere and in every
magnitude. Time changes everything and “Purpose of the business” is not foreign
to this trend.

My personal
view of Purpose is that it has change during last decades, and even today is
continuously evolving. I find two distinctive moments, first one when the
purpose was personal benefit and the benefit for the society was pursuit if
possible, and second one, the modern view of purpose, which goes after the
benefit of the whole society, the need to make this world a better place and as
consequence achieve the personal benefit.

After
thinking on this topic I came to the conclusion that these changes are
generated due to changes in the society. As society is the only cluster that
aggregates all the consumer and prospects of all the companies of the world,
changes in this group will impact in all of them. The change we can appreciate
is that people has been becoming more concern on well-being, on greater
benefits and on trying to make a better world for everyone. We can prove it
from different point of view depending on the group of interest; as an example
we can say that taking care of environment is making a better place, or also
the inclusion of minorities could impact on major benefit for those societies. But
as we see they are all ways of making greater good for all of us.

As an
example I would like to quote P&G Purpose:

“We will provide branded
products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of
the world’s consumers, now and for generations to come. As a result, consumers
will reward us with leadership sales, profit and value creation, allowing our
people, our shareholders and the communities in which we live and work to
prosper.”

Where we
can see exposed the benefit for the today’s and next generations’ consumers (what
we can call “society benefit”) and also the benefit of the shareholders (what
we can call “personal benefit”) that comes as results of the previous one.